We left last night witnessing European markets suffering at the hands of oil price volatility – but what was everyone worrying about? As the US was left to navigate its own session the oil price rose back above $31 a barrel and consequently managed to help the US tie down gains…. So maybe we spoke a little too soon, as oil returned back to the underbelly of $30 p/barrel on Friday morning. Who thought it was ok to relax about oil? Iran has looked as though it will fill the already over supplied market. We express our gratitude, after weeks of oversupply, oil prices plummeting and market turmoil. Truly Iran, we can go into the weekend with a weight lifted.

Unsurprisingly this outweighed America’s solid session on Thursday and early advances in Asia, with all European markets posting sharp declines. BHP were amongst the worst hit, as the further commodity price declines added to the news that they had written down the value of their US shale assets by $7.2bn. Miners including Anglo American, Glencore, Rio Tinto, Antofogasta and BHP have now all roughly lost around 15% since the beginning of the year.

At the close the FTSE 100 was down almost 2%, German and French markets closed over 2.5% lower. Investors rushed to safe haven assets, as they attempted to evade the ‘oil spills’. Golf was up 0.71% at the time of writing. At the time of writing on Friday afternoon the oil price was $29.57 (-2.54%).